In 1837, Georgia lawmakers authorized a “Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum.” Five years later, the facility opened as the Georgia Lunatic Asylum on the outskirts of the cotton-rich town that served as the antebellum state capital.

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Where Iberian Pig takes its inspiration from all of Spain, Cooks & Soldiers focuses on the Basque region, which gained an international profile during the craze over molecular gastronomy and its first exponent, Ferran Adrià of elBulli.

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Southbound magazine, the newest ancillary title from the publishers of Atlanta magazine, showcases the top travel destinations in the Southeast. We visit idyllic small towns and exciting cities in search of outstanding vacation opportunities.Inside Southbound

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Georgia offers diverse places to see and things to do, from the mountains in North Georgia to the coasts of Savannah and The Golden Isles. Take a tour in your own backyard and visit all that our great state has to offer. Begin your tour

Dining in has its advantages: You can wear what you want, eat when you want, and drink as much as you like. To craft the perfect dinner party but skip dirtying the kitchen, look to these seven purveyors for the best meat, cheese, pasta, wine, and dessert.

Dekalb County

On lakeside living and LGBT culture in DeKalb County’s smallest municipality

In 2012, arts consultant Kathie deNobriga succeeded a CDC scientist as mayor of Pine Lake, a sylvan city of 800 residents and DeKalb County’s smallest. Tucked away near Stone Mountain, Pine Lake is just a quarter square mile and has a police force of three.

Parental unity

An undercurrent of distrust has long pervaded DeKalb County schools. Thanks to perceptions that the “other part” of the county was getting more resources, parents in north and south DeKalb were deeply suspicious of each other. It took a crisis to bring them together.

Surprising: But not closer to the city

Conventional wisdom—and decades of TV cops shows—may lead you to believe that the city is dangerous and undereducated while the suburbs are havens for all things intellectual. In some places those stereotypes may well hold true.

As recently as the late 1990s, the DeKalb County neighborhood of Kirkwood was known for street-corner drug deals, blatant prostitution, and a crumbling central business district. An influx of families and commercial investment has softened Kirkwood’s hard edge, resulting in an urban village of roughly 5,000 people that residents call harmoniously diverse.

Things aren’t much better in DeKalb or Gwinnett.

Well, no matter how statisticians choose to quantify the chasm between the country’s haves and have-nots; metro Atlanta keeps coming out on top. The latest: an Urban Institute study that shows three metro counties rank in the top 10 for an affordable housing gap.

Youth also claims he was wrongfully incarcerated

Antwan Wheeler remembers that he and two of his friends were walking along a residential street to a nightclub for teens in South Dekalb when he first spotted the police car slowing as it came over the hill. It was December 23, 2010, just after 8 p.m. A fifteen-year-old with an extensive criminal background, including two felony convictions, Wheeler had had run-ins with this particular cop before. And even though he says he wasn’t breaking the law at this moment, he was bracing himself for the usual hassle and interrogation.

Antwan Wheeler claims arresting officer, now off the force, beat him up. And even DeKalb PD’s internal affairs claim the cop lied under oath.

An Atlanta-area youth was assaulted by a DeKalb County police officer, arrested, and served two years in a juvenile correctional facility, all for a crime he did not commit, according to a lawsuit filed in DeKalb County State Court on Tuesday. But what’s worse, the complaint claims, is that this wrongful incarceration may not have been an isolated oversight, but rather the result of problems endemic in the DeKalb juvenile justice system.

Politics and distrust in county government and schools are behind current incorporation push

First came Dunwoody, which snatched up Perimeter Center, arguably the richest square mile of commercial property in metro Atlanta. Then came Brookhaven, which successfully padded its tax rolls with parcels lying far outside its historic neighborhood borders.